Terrorism and Tyranny
Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil
By James Bovard
Palgrave Macmillan
HC, 440 pg. US$26.95/C$39.95
The war against liberty
By Steven Martinovich
web posted October 27, 2003
In the war against terrorism the most important metric for
Americans may be the number of terrorist attacks that have
occurred on American soil since September 11, 2001. If you
rely on that as your sole criterion then you'll likely be satisfied
with the performance of George W. Bush. Adopting such a
narrow definition of success, however, can blind a person to
some of the issues that the war itself has raised -- issues that
carry long term ramifications for the American people and the
world.
James Bovard lays out what he believes those consequences
may be in a withering assault on the Bush administration in
Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace
to Rid the World of Evil, a catalogue of mistakes and abuses that
have been perpetrated in the name of ridding the world of
terrorism. For Bovard, what began as a justified battle to punish
those responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and
Pentagon has turned into an out of control monster that threatens
the liberty of Americans and the safety of billions around the
world.
"The war on terrorism is the first political growth industry of the
new millennium," proclaims Bovard, a charge that would be
impossible to refute. Since September 11, 2001, the federal
government has considerably expanded in scope and power.
Law enforcement has been given almost unprecedented power
to conduct surveillance on Americans, secret searches,
confiscate "suspicious" financial assets and detain aliens -- both
legal and illegal, often on the flimsiest pretexts. Americans are
encouraged to report suspicious activity -- which includes those
who grow impatient while waiting in grocery lines or recently
shaved off a beard -- while anyone in an airport may be subject
to arrest for raising their voice at a security official.
Bovard argues that these new powers are nothing more than a
reward for failure. Having failed to discover the September 11
plot ahead of time despite the fact that the government had the
information necessary, federal officials argued they needed more
even power to prevent future attacks. Congress rushed to pass
Bush administration approved bills like the USA PATRIOT Act
with little debate or concern for constitutional questions and
essentially eliminated many of the checks and balances that
protected Americans from their government. Americans are now
considered potential collaborators instead of potential victims.
To add insult to injury, Americans are no safer today then they
were before the terrorist attacks.
Just as worrisome, writes Bovard, is the effect America's war on
terrorism is having on other nations in the world. Enlisted in the
war, some nations have used it as an opportunity to crack down
on internal dissent. Financial and military aid is sent to morally
questionable nations like Pakistan and Uzbekistan, tools that are
soon turned against their citizens. People across the planet have
become less free as a result of the war and the American
taxpayer has the privilege of paying the bill.
Bovard also takes aim at the long-standing notion that states
can't be terrorists, underscoring his frequently made point that
government is more of a danger than terrorism. During the
1990s, he points out, a single police department in the United
States killed more Americans than did terrorist attacks. While
over 7 700 people were killed worldwide between 1980 and
2000 by terrorism, governments killed more than 10 million. By
declaring terrorism to be the greatest evil, writes Bovard, Bush
has made murders by government "morally negligible." With
American aid to some of these governments the death toll due to
state murder can only grow. Government excesses in the United
States, he all but says, can bring that horror home in the future.
Terrorism and Tyranny is a solid effort but Bovard does lose
some of his steam when he tackles Israel and Iraq. The Israeli-
Palestinian conflict is ostensibly included to illustrate the danger
of a government that goes too far in battling what it defines as
terrorism but Bovard takes a one-sided view that at times seems
to designed to inflame the passions of the reader. In the case of
Iraq, Bovard argues that the war against Saddam Hussein was
unjustified because Iraq wasn't a threat to Americans -- an
assertion that has yet to be proven -- and that the American
supported sanctions only served to kill hundreds of thousands of
Iraqis between 1991 and 2003, numbers that have come under
fire for their accuracy. Bovard could also be accused of being
overly critical of the federal government's efforts -- it's difficult to
believe that with few exceptions that the battle against terrorism
is entirely dominated by incompetence and malfeasance.
Bovard closes his effort with a series of recommendations for
both the Bush administration and Americans which include
sensible ideas like halting foreign aid to oppressive governments,
ending the attempt to micromanage the Middle East and admit
that domestic anti-terrorism efforts are largely ineffective. Bovard
quite rightly argues that the word "terrorism" can't serve as a
magic incantation that ends limits on government power.
Americans should be as skeptical of their government now as
they were in the days before September 11, 2003 before, as
Bovard writes, so that the specter of terrorism can't be used to
"slip the leash the Founding Fathers crafted to bind the rulers of
America in perpetuity."
Steven Martinovich is a freelance writer in Sudbury, Ontario,
Canada.
Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com